The Narthex

This essay is the latest of several I have written on what I call “faith-based land use planning,”[i] planning that integrates love of God and love of neighbor by including places of worship and places of service. My focus here is on the Victorian Gothic Revivalist Augustus Welby…

Baptisms and funerals -- and how I wish there were more of the first and fewer of the second! -- underscore our historical character. Consider, as well, how we mark an historic event by asking, for example, “Where were you when Leo XIV stepped forth as the first American pope?”…

In 1776 it was a stockade against the coming Redcoats; in the 1950s, a fallout shelter against Soviet missiles. The form changes, but the psychology does not. Both respond to the same ancient fear: How do I protect myself from uncertainty, loss, suffering, and death? In 1953, when I was…

In 753 B.C., Rome rose in the imagination of the ancient world with the story of two brothers with lives marked by violence, destiny, and divine intrigue. From that narrative emerged a civilization whose influence continues to shape the Church, the West, and the very structure of human thought. According…

At sixteen years old in 1958, I worked in an East Boston shipyard. It was an environment of high-stakes, industrial-grade labor. I stood on the deck of a new hull with multi-ton overhead steel plates swinging into place, dodging the blinding glare of arc welding and the constant hiss of…

My son Karol graduated high school May 26. Like parents around the country, I’m proud of him, and I thank God that He let me at least reach the point I could deposit Karol on the threshold of adulthood. I pray He let me carry him through the next stage…

Trisomy 18, also called Edwards syndrome, is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 18. March 18, or 3-18, has been designated Trisomy 18 Awareness Day. Children with Trisomy 18, Down syndrome, and other chromosomal variants too often have been discussed in public life with the language of burden, cost,…

Piety is both a moral virtue and a gift of the Holy Spirit. Piety allows one to recognize relationships and where one fits in those relationships. With regard to God, it enables the person to recognize that God is Creator and he is a creature or, to put it bluntly,…

“A place for everything and everything in its place” is a worthy maxim, if we know who and where we are. Often, though, we know neither. Or so it seems. Catholics believe that the human person is an incarnate spirit, a union of body and soul. But what kind of…

Prayer and fasting together comprise a forgotten discipline. When was the last time you heard a priest recommend the pair? Christ of course spoke of this in the context of exorcism: “This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting” (Matthew 17:21). In the early Church, fasting was…

As the Church prepares to close the 2026 Easter Season with Evening Prayer II next Sunday, I'll share some final reflections on this juncture in the liturgical year. Liturgical Anomaly The “pastoral” shift of the Solemnity of the Ascension from the 40th day after Easter (i.e., Ascension Thursday) to displacing…

Today is Karol Wojtyła’s/St. John Paul II’s 126th birthday. He was born on Tuesday, May 18, 1920. It is hard to believe that, after a 26-year pontificate supplemented by eight of the Ratzinger pontificate, the teaching and focus of the Wojtyła papacy as a lens to view the proper implementation…

The interval between the Ascension and Pentecost was archetypal for a particular kind of prayer: the novena. Before the end of His final post-Resurrection bodily appearances to His disciples, Christ instructed them on the fortieth day to remain in Jerusalem, wait, and pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit.…

I have been a critic of the “pastoral adaptation” of the Catholic Bishops of the United States, whereby Ascension Thursday is transferred to the Seventh Sunday of Easter if that is the policy of an entire ecclesiastical province. Most of the United States has “adapted” except for some ecclesiastical provinces…

“All men by nature desire to know,” reads the first line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. A bit of clarification is in order. Not all of the many students I’ve taught wanted to know about this bold claim. For some (like Bubba in the back row) it’s TMI, too much information. And…